Ruler of the World

Salim fired again at another Kashmiri cavalryman within thirty feet of his elephant. This time he missed but his arrow hit the man’s horse in the neck. Thrashing its head about and whinnying in pain, it skittered sideways, causing its rider to drop his lance as he fought with both hands to control his mount. Salim heard a thump behind him and the howdah swayed violently. Glancing round, he saw that his second bodyguard lay slumped on the floor. Suleiman Beg was already trying to staunch a bullet wound to the man’s right thigh that was bleeding profusely, using a yellow cotton scarf he had pulled from his own neck.

Meanwhile Salim could see a strong body of Moghul cavalry was now in turn charging into the flanks of the Kashmiris, attempting to beat them back. Several Kashmiris fell — one, a burly, heavily bearded man carried clean out of the saddle and transfixed by a well-aimed lance thrust from one of the captains of the imperial bodyguard. Another was decapitated by the heavy stroke of a Moghul battleaxe which caught him across the throat just beneath the jaw, sending his head flying backwards amid a spray of blood. The Moghuls were succeeding as he knew they would, thought Salim, but then the elephant beneath him lurched once more. The second mahout, a small, dark, elderly man wearing only a rough cotton loincloth, had fallen from behind its ears to the ground. Lashing its trunk, the riderless beast began to turn away from the conflict. As it did so, it knocked a Moghul horseman from his saddle. If Salim didn’t do something the frightened elephant would kill more men and panic more horses.

Disregarding the noise and the fierce conflict around him, Salim climbed over the raised wooden front of the howdah. He managed to get his legs on either side of the elephant’s body and to slide down on to its neck. Grabbing at the elephant’s steel plate head armour to steady himself, he drew his sword. Reversing it, and despite the cuts its sharp edge made to his hand, he used its hilt instead of the mahout’s steel rod to tap the elephant’s skull to give the command for it to halt. Reassured by the weight of a rider on its neck once more, the animal began to calm and soon halted. In its panic, it had moved fifty yards away from the centre of the fight. Turning round, Salim could see that the survivors of the Kashmiri cavalry charge were breaking off the battle and retreating back through the rhododendrons up towards the ridge over which they had emerged less than an hour previously. Many did not make it. Salim saw one cream-turbaned Kashmiri, realising that he could not outride his four Moghul pursuers on his blowing black horse, turn and charge back towards them, striking one from the saddle before being cut down himself by a blow to the head.

Later that day, Salim was summoned once more to his father’s war council. This time as he entered the scarlet command tent he did not find the discussion already in full flow. Rather, all eyes were turned to him as he entered and his father was conducting his commanders in applause. As he made his way towards the stool Akbar indicated to him, which was placed next to the emperor’s own gilded throne, Salim was untroubled by doubts that on this occasion at least his behaviour had pleased his father.

Chapter 19

Jewel of Chastity

‘You are fifteen years old. It is time you took your first wife.’ Before Salim could reply, Akbar strode off to inspect the target — a log of wood on which three large clay jars had been placed on the parade ground beneath the royal palace in Lahore — at which he had just fired his musket. Even from three hundred yards away, Salim could see that his father had shattered the middle jar. Since their triumphant return from Kashmir three months ago Akbar had several times invited him hunting, hawking or to musketry practice.

Salim hurried after him. ‘Father, what did you say?’

‘That the time has come for you to marry. As well as helping to strengthen our dynasty it will be a celebration of our great victory in Kashmir.’ Akbar smiled. Salim knew that not even Akbar had thought Kashmir would fall into his hands quite so easily. Confronted by the reality that the mountains encircling his kingdom were no barrier against his determined Moghul enemy, its ruler had rushed to sue for peace. In his mind’s eye, Salim again saw the Sultan of Kashmir prostrating himself at his father’s feet outside Akbar’s scarlet command tent then standing meekly while the khutba was read in the name of the Moghul emperor. Akbar had granted the sultan life and liberty but from now on Kashmir would be firmly under Moghul control. What was more his father — never content with his victories or his empire’s boundaries — was already readying his forces for his invasion of Sind.

‘But who am I to marry?’

‘After consulting with my counsellors I have selected your cousin, Man Bai. Her father Bhagwan Das, Raja of Amber, has already given his consent.’

Salim stared at his father. Man Bai was his first cousin, the daughter of his mother’s brother. He had only seen her once when they had both been children and all he could remember was a quiet, skinny, long-legged little girl with her hair bound in plaits.

‘You look surprised. I thought you would be pleased to cross this threshold into manhood. I hear that you are not averse to visiting the girls in the bazaar.’

Salim flushed. He had thought he was being discreet. On the return march from Kashmir, he and his milk- brother Suleiman Beg had slipped out from the imperial quarters to find willing girls among the camp followers. He had lost his virginity one night to a cinnamon-scented Turkish woman while encamped on a mountain pass with cold winds battering the hide walls of her tent — not that he would have noticed had the tent blown away. Back in Lahore, the two youths had taken to slipping out to the town at night. There was a particular inn where Geeta, a plump dancing girl with high, round breasts, had laughingly been instructing him further in the ways of love while Suleiman Beg had been finding delight in the arms of her sister. Afterwards, sneaking back into the palace, they tried to outdo each other with exaggerated tales of their prowess. But tumbling a girl in the bazaar was very different from taking a wife.

‘I am surprised. I hadn’t thought of marriage at all. .’

‘Young though you are, you should have. Marrying into the houses of the most noble of our vassals, as I did, tightens our grip on our empire as surely as conquest. Such alliances give the powerful families an even greater stake in our success. They ensure that in times of trouble they will support us, not because they love us but because it is to their advantage.’ Akbar paused, eyes searching Salim’s face. He had seldom spoken to his son so earnestly. ‘Why do you think there are so few uprisings against us and every year we grow yet richer? Why do you think that the ulama no longer dare to bleat openly about my policies of religious tolerance or my Hindu wives or my introduction of the Din-i-Ilahi, the Divine Faith? My position is unassailable and that is in good part because of the alliances I have made through marriage. Understand this, Salim. This is not about your wishes nor about pleasure. You can build yourself a haram of concubines for that. It is about duty. I have informed your mother of my decision.’

His father’s view of marriage was a joyless one, devoid of human emotion, Salim thought, so unlike that of his grandmother who often told him of the mutual love and support she had shared with Humayun. Perhaps his father’s loveless marriage to his own mother was at the root of his coldness. It had been his first union and it may have made him even more reluctant to give himself fully to succeeding brides than his self-contained self-confident nature made him already. Certainly he never spoke of any of them with great affection, being seemingly keener to list the alliances they had brought and how they had contributed to his own and the empire’s glory.

Anyway, Hirabai would surely be pleased by his marriage. Any child he had by Man Bai — and a son might well be a future Moghul emperor — would be more Rajput than Moghul. But then he remembered what she had said of her brother Bhagwan Das, Man Bai’s father: ‘People can always be bought. .’ As so often, his mind became clouded with doubt and uncertainty, though he knew he should be pleased that his father had arranged such an important dynastic match for him. He tried to look grateful — which in his heart he was.

‘When will the wedding take place?’

‘In about eight weeks’ time when your bride arrives from Amber.’ Akbar smiled. ‘That will also give time for guests to travel here from all over the empire and for others to send gifts. I intend that this will be one of the most magnificent spectacles ever witnessed in Lahore and have already been planning it with Abul Fazl. The festivities will last for a month with processions, camel races, polo matches and elephant fights, and every night feasting and